In this sermon, the preacher emphasizes the spiritual deadness of people and the role of the church in bringing them to life. He refers to a quote by John Ruskin that describes preaching as raising the dead, highlighting the scriptural basis for this idea. The preacher expresses his belief in a future Pentecost that will surpass the original Pentecost, but without any individual taking credit for it. He also discusses the importance of faith and the need for believers to mature spiritually. The sermon concludes with a call for revival and a lamentation over the decline of prayer meetings in churches.

What's the greatest need in the church today, as you would see it from what you've observed, and I'm sure if we digested some of your books that we may have insight into it, but what would you perceive, Brother Ravenhill, to be the greatest need in the church in America specifically today? I won't give you my opinion, I'll give you a Bible opinion from Jeremiah chapter 2, verse 13, my people have committed two evils, they've forsaken me, the fountain of living waters, and hewn them out cisterns, broken cisterns that can hold no water. It's amazing to me when every pastor that comes, oh, I'm in a mega church, you know, we get 4,000 Sunday morning, got nothing to do with your church. Every church in America nearly is filled Sunday morning. How many people do you have in your prayer meeting? The prayer meeting has almost died, not just in Presbyterian churches, but in Pentecostal churches, in Baptist churches. I have a prayer meeting Thursday morning for pastors, about 20 come. Some come 200 miles, some come 300 miles round trip, and the last 5 or 6 weeks we've all ended up on the floor in tears, praying for one thing, revival. Nobody's praying for his church. I believe the spiritual condition of America at this moment is lower than it was in the revival of the 1700s with Jonathan Edwards. We've forsaken God, particularly we've forsaken the prayer meeting. What would happen if you had a choir like, say, you had at First Baptist or somewhere, I First Baptized in Dallas or Good Brothers First Baptist Church in Atlanta, I stayed there a month once, you have about 200 people in the choir. What if only 10% turned up for choir rehearsal on Friday night? Do you think you might get the resignation of the choir master? But supposing a guy with 26,000 members had 10% come to the prayer meeting, he'd die of shock. You see, we have had people, last, just a year ago now, we finished our 500th prayer meeting every Friday night, and it was a prayer meeting. In most churches now, the preacher preaches Sunday morning, Sunday night and Wednesday night, forget it. One of the young pastors that comes to us, he got moved by the power of God, he went to his church and said, look, I'm going to preach Sunday morning, Sunday night, but not Wednesday night, we're going to pray. He's in a country church, he went from 60 Wednesday night to 6, they don't want to pray. We had a prayer meeting where people drove 4, 5 and 6 hours, and there were people that came, and they belonged to famous churches in California, and they came over and said, look, we know why God's brought us in this area, we need to learn to pray. We went to a very popular church, it's attended by dozens, hundreds of film stars and others, but there's no prayer life there. But you know what happened? When they come 3 or 4 times, they quit, you know why? Because we had men that used to mumble in their prayers, and it pleased God to educate them in the spirit, and I would go on Wednesday night, I'd go Friday night, there was one full-blooded American Indian, he was dying in the gutter, snow falling on him, he was a victim of drugs and drink, and God awakened him, and he got wonderfully saved, and he got an anointing in prayer. To hear that man pray for the American Indians, they're the most neglected people in America today, and the Indians somehow don't go after them, you can't go on the reservations, they kill you. All they say, listen, you stole our land, you stole our oil, you stole our mineral rights, you stole our fishing rights, get out of here. And I've told him, stay with it, stay to your people, with your people, don't let somebody else wear your crown. You see, some of us, we're walking around eternity, and God is going to put a crown on my head, and I didn't do the job, so he passes it to Dale, and he's going to wear it for a billion years. Every time I see him, I say, that should have been my crown, but that's my fault, it's not the devil's fault. No man take thy crown, that's a warning against deacons, but anyhow, don't let any man take your crown, God has given you a job, do it, if you die, that's what it takes. Brother Leonard, what is the nature and the content and the direction of those prayer meetings? For the average lay person who has not been able to attend, where do you begin, what do you pray for, what do you target, what happens in those prayer meetings that are so unusual, and what are the kinds of prayer meetings that we need to start having in our churches? Well, we have different target, I call it target praying. For instance, one week we pray for all the husbands of the wives, or fathers of the children who were there, whose daddies were not saved. Maybe not even church members, we concentrate on unsaved fathers, unsaved husbands, and other times we concentrate on teenagers. You see, there's something about covenanting in prayer. I went to Dr. Tosa's church, thank you, and I stayed there for two weeks, and I had the privilege of praying with him, he was a wonderful man, he wasn't the greatest preacher I've ever heard, but he had an intimacy with God like nobody else. And I remember one day he said, Len, don't let anybody diminish your appetite or zeal for prayer. He said, I'll tell you what happened, in World War I, the finest young men in our church went to war, they were drafted, 30 of them, and we covenanted with their parents and their wives, we covenanted in prayer that not one of those men would get killed or seriously injured, and every man came back. The only one that was lame was his own son. But he said, if we can covenant in prayer like that, why can't you covenant in prayer in your churches? Not one of our girls in our churches is going to get pregnant, not one of our boys is going to go in to drink. We're not just going to raise nice healthy children, we're going to do more than that. We want to produce spiritual offspring. And the reason those superstars that came to our prayer meetings didn't continue, well, they heard men that were praying with anointing. Again, they heard this fellow crying with tears for the different tribes in America. It's astounding, there are, what, two and a quarter American Indians? Where's David Brainerd today? There isn't a Brainerd there. How do we have a right to pray for revival when in the 20th century there are so many people who believe, theologically, that things are just going to get worse and worse and worse. And God certainly is not going to send a revival, so why are you wasting your time praying that God will send one? Well, you get a nucleus of people who get together and talk with the deacons and others, but it says here, they have forsaken me. So what? How many of you deacons come to prayer meetings? One night I was standing on the platform with Charles Stanley, there were maybe over a thousand people there. I think he asked 50 deacons, and I said, Charles, where are your 50 deacons tonight? He said, well, I can count 15. I said, well, fire the rest. What did they do in the upper room when the Holy Ghost came? They gave themselves continually to fundraising, did they? What did they do? Give ourselves continually to prayer. I like the figure, I'm going to speak maybe one day, I think Hannah is the best type of an intercessor that I know, that all the qualifications, she had grief, she suffered, she mocked, and yet year by year, it wasn't once they scorned her. But when she got pregnant, she didn't care a hill of beans about anybody. Well, let me say this too. I think there's a danger of seeking revival to justify my ministry, to prove we're the best people in town. We mentioned it with Paul this morning. What does it say in Malachi? The Lord whom ye seek. We're not seeking him. We're seeking revival. We're seeking healing. We're seeking miracles. It's not that we need. If we get God, we get all that's needed. And revival is when God comes down. Pick up the book for me, please. Here's a little book I hope you'll all get. It's Come Down, Lord. It's a good book, of course. It's from England. But apart from that, get a copy if you can. It's published by Banner of Truth. But I mark this page 23. Now, this is revival. I think revival is the most prostituted word that we have in our vocabulary today, either revival or faith. We don't know much about either. Revival stops the traffic. As Dave Tozer used to say, Leonard, when revival comes, it changes the moral climate of a community. Taverns close down. Nightclubs close down. It's, I mean, there's a war going on now. Dear God, if ever we need to run a whole armour of God, it's today. How many of you may know of the book, The Whole Armour of God, by Goebbels? Do you have it? Let me see your hands. Oh, good. Only two out of all of you. It's a wonderful book. It's 1130 pages. It's $36. We can send dear Nancy an address. We can get it for $18. It was written like most of the classics in the 1600s. And it's the most stirring. I gave Wilkerson a copy of that five years ago. When I came back, he said, Hey, while you're at it, we had a vacation in the Bahamas. We should be there now. We get a free flight and a free holidays. But this glorious atmosphere here, you know, where you can freeze every night, is more attractive. So... How do you address the people who say that we are living in a day and age where everything is getting worse and worse and worse. There is no way God's going to send revival. Let's hang on for dear life and pray for the rapture. But you have no right to believe and to storm the throne of heaven in faith, believing that God is going to send a revival. He tells you in the Bible, things are going to get worse and worse. How do you answer those people? Well, I answered it this week this way. When the world population was five million, did God love it? Yes. Does he love it less when it's five billion? If God isn't willing that any should perish when it's five million, is he more willing that many should perish now? You see, the trouble in the world today, the stagnation, the moral desolation in America, and the stagnation in America is not due to the strength of humanism. It's because of the weakness of evangelism. People don't get born again when they come to the altar. They leave it, they come damned and they leave it damned. They're not born. People can't be born in five minutes, put off ten million sins and transgressions and violations of the law of God. They can't change a way of life, put off the old man, put on the new man by just standing there in tears, as I told you last night. When I heard that guy say on TV, come forward, it'll only take a few minutes, I went to bed and cried. I said, he's the leading evangelist in America, telling people who are dead in trespasses, they're not bad, they're dead. The prodigal didn't say, my son is bad, he says he's dead. It's no fun to look on a congregation. Maybe I said yesterday, a hundred years ago, that great art critic in England, what was his name, John? John Ruskin said, preaching is 30 minutes to raise the dead. I thought that was facetious, it's scriptural. All those lovely people you have, executive people, deacons, nice people, wealthy people, poor people, hippies, yuppies, what have you got? There they are. They're dead. And we're the ones that transmit life. But dear brother, I believe we're going to see a Pentecost that will allow Pentecost, Pentecost. I'll tell you what, nobody's going to stick his name on it. Swaggart's had his chance to evangelize the world, messed it up, all the rubbers. They've had millions of dollars, what have they done? They've brought disgrace to the name. People ridicule it. But God is a jealous God. God's going to raise up men. I pray for Romania and behind the icon every day of my life. People want to tell me now that God's bypassed America. Don't waste your time. Why? Wasn't it as dead in the days of Jonathan Edwards? What is revival? Well, I think it was an old American, I think it was E.M. Bounds said, that E.M. Bounds is the breath of God on a situation that threatens to become a corpse. We're very near death in America. There's no time for a new reformation in a denomination. He's going to raise up new men with new vision. I want to preach on vision tonight, God willing. And we've got to have vision and passion. God's got to upset our whole schedules, our lifestyle, our way of eating, our way of living, our way of socializing in the church. God help us. Sure you can get a hearty church. If you put a chicken supper before the prayer meeting, they'll come for the chicken supper. You drop the chickens, you'll drop the crowd. Because they're all chicken, but anyhow. I believe, if I didn't believe there was going to be an awakening. Okay. God has given me the privilege of knowing praying men. There's a little fellowship of people in a town called Zion, Illinois. Do you know where that is? And it's still there. There's one or two original people that were there with Dowie. And I went there. They asked me to talk with a man. He's upstairs in bed, normally. He speaks with a mic to the congregation downstairs every morning. Do you know what happened to him? I walked in. He thanked me. He said, Mr. Hill, you do me an honor. I've read your books. I said, please don't say a word. My mother said, if ever you go into royalty, you never turn your back. And when I backpedaled to the door, I said, I want to thank you. Do you know that man, Andrews? God called him to go to Israel. And he mastered Hebrew. And when he got there, God said, go back. He said, but people gave me money. Do as I say. Go back. Intercede for America. What did he do? For 30 years, he prayed from 10 o'clock in the night till 5 o'clock in the morning by himself. Oh, you talk about David Brin. I'm talking about our day. I'm talking about the man I talked with. When they carried him in his little wooden casket out of that room, it was the first time he'd been out of the house in 12 years. Never out of the house. How does a man retain his fire? He's not only seen men are lost. Men are not merely lost in your church. They're robbers. They're robbing God of the right to use their personality. They're robbing God of the right to use their time. They're robbing God of the right to use their tongue. Dear God, Saturday they come. They shout till they're hoarse. They're frantic on Saturday at the sports arena. They're frozen on Sunday. And here is a man, he said, listen, I am not a bit weary. And this is a staggering thing to me. He said, Mr. Rainer, there's going to be an awakening before Jesus comes. And I forgot it till Martha reminded me the other day. He said, there's going to be a revival that will sweep 1 billion people into the kingdom of God. Well, that's a lot. But there are 5 billion in the world. Are the other 4 billion going to hell? There's a man around the country now, I don't know if, have you met Paul Kane yet? Well, Paul, I've ministered with him a few times lately. He's an amazing man. He used to get 30 and 40 thousand people in his meetings. He deputized for Bill Brunner. And then he disappeared. I heard of him in 1950 when I first came to America. I didn't meet him till about 20 years after. And then I met him recently. And he said in a meeting we're in, he said, God has revealed to me there's going to be a moving of the Spirit of God. And what? And 1 billion people will be born again. And he mentioned your country, dear brother. What did he call him, son? He mentioned your country. Those other countries are in the belly of Russia now. Latvia, Estonia, Lithuania. Dear God, when I was a boy, we had a family who used to come from Estonia. I think there were what? About 10 in the family. They all played different instruments. And they set our church on fire. Well, where did they disappear to? Dear God, you say my church would never pray. Get some conditions from this brother about what's happening in their country. You know, the two most pleasant looking men in the world right now are the two biggest enemies of the cross. One is the Pope and the other is Gorbachev. And they fooled us. They fooled us. We may not have a collision with Communism. We'll have one with Romanism. It's a deadly enemy because it says Mary is co-redemptrix and Mary is a mediator before God. But going back to this, there never has been a situation in the world as difficult as today. We've never had all the cults that we have now. I see the nations being squashed like this. This wall is moving in this way. It's cults. This way, wall is moving this way. It's the occult. And these things are rampant. My dear country of England again, in the last 25 years, they've closed 600 branch churches of the Church of England alone. Leave out the Methodists and others. But in the place of 600 churches, we have now 600 mosques. The greatest revival in the world right now is amongst the Muslims. Why? Because they're prepared to die. You can't scare them. We're prepared to die. Our folk are not prepared to live. Sure, they'll come to a camp. They think, ride horses or have, play tennis or some other thing. I know there's nothing wrong in that. But where's the passion? It's young men that see it. I'm not trying to escape it. I want to tell you, for God, I'm in my 83rd year now. I have a bigger fire burning in my belly, if you like, or my heart, than ever in my life. And I'm determined by the grace of God to wage war. And I say, I've got young men coming 300 miles to our prayer meeting. That's my consolation. I know that Manly is stirring people in his area, Bill in his area. Still, God has a remnant, but the remnant is not enough. We've got to return to the old ways. The fire has to burn. Dear God, the prayer meeting has to become the most attractive thing in the church. You fire the deacons. When I went to the last church I was in, I said, listen, every deacon has to meet me half an hour before the service, any meeting. Friday night we meet at 9 o'clock and pray till midnight. You tell me about Spurgeon. Paul was showing me a little book the other day. Yes, surely he was a great man of it. Do you know in all the 20 years he was in that church he never once made an altar call? Do you know what the deacons did for him? They went in the side room where he prayed and wept and groaned before God. Every time he went in the pulpit the deacons put their arms under his armpits and carried him to the door to get him on the platform. One old lady that visited him, knew him, told me about his prayer life. It's amazing. And no man is greater than his prayer life. I don't care how many church members he has. Somebody told me the other day, you like a favorite verse. I don't know, I'm jumping around a bit. But you know, I think the greatest honor, I don't have any doctorates, either begged or borrowed or burned or anything else. I have no degrees. You can have 32 and still be frozen. But one thing I covet, I want to be one of the ten most wanted men in hell. I want the demons to say, Jesus I know and Ravenel I know. Jesus I know and Del I know. That's why the devil has opposed him. Dear man, the last night moved me to tears as I was trying to come to the platform. I wish that it is thereafter. I said, you and I have one thing in common when the apostle Paul went in death's aft. Dear Lord, my wife's been to my funeral half a dozen times, not at my bedside. Lots of people like to see me die, but I'm not going to die, I'm going to live. They actually threw a white sheet over me and the doctor said, you won't last four minutes. I was going to die piously and I had my hands folded and he said, you won't last four minutes. Me? I said, you're talking about me. Then the doctor said, you won't, he said by another 11 years from now you'll be crippled and paralyzed, your back's broken, your feet are broken, your legs are broken, you'll be useless. Well, I may be useless, but I'm still hanging on. But the thing is this, I've been privileged to share in prayer, and I don't remember great pulpits. I've preached some of the great pulpits of the world. I don't remember them. I've taught with great preachers, but when men have let me pray with them, I remember all of them. I can tell you how we pray. I remember manly at the, what was it, national conference we had in? No. When, no, when, no, Bertha Smith was there. No, Bertha. Philadelphia. That night of prayer we had, we said have a night of prayer, and we got in the bedroom and, boy, after about 10 minutes the door kept going out, and I thought, my, I'm going to be left by myself as usual, and the phone weren't going out, they were coming in. So I looked around, there were about six pairs of legs, the guys were under the bed, the guys under the bed at that side, and at this side, and we prayed till, I don't know what, two or three in the morning, and somebody said, God came down that night. Well, that's where revival is born. You can't schedule it. The stupid thing, we're going to start a revival next Sunday night and finish there. Who, who gives orders to the Holy Ghost? Sensitivity to the Spirit of God isn't there. In the middle of the Welsh revival, and remember there's a guy, 26 years of age, and he's already prayed 13 years for revival. They wouldn't allow people to photograph him. The greatest preachers in America, in England were there at the time. William Booth was there. He left his office desk to go listen to this 26-year-old guy. The greatest Bible teacher in the world was there. G. Campbell Morgan. He left his office at Westminster and came to hear this young Welshman. F.B. Meyer came from the Baptist church. They were all flocking to Wales to hear a man who was anointed in the Spirit of God. He comes into a meeting. The biggest hall in town had 800 seats. Everyone was packed an hour before time. And in comes the young man. Everybody's waiting for him to come. There's one seat on the front. He went to the front seat, bowed his head, and he prayed for three hours. What do you mean? Do you think our congregation would do that? They say, hey, he's fallen asleep. For three hours. Until he felt the rich anointing. Then he stood up and preached for 15 minutes. The glory of God came down. And it all happened. Nobody dare leave the place. He went out at 10 o'clock and prayed the whole night for the anointing for the next day. The people stayed till 2 and 3 in the morning. They did that week after week. You see, we take our little revivals to South America Swaggart What do you call him again? Swaggart went. He took the formula he had here. Turn it on at 6, turn it off at 7. It didn't do a thing. It failed. Because it was American? No. Because it wasn't Biblical. Another big shot did the same thing. But the family was having revival in South America now. I was reading one report. It said they go to a meeting. It starts Wednesday. They have Wednesday night. They have Thursday night. They have Friday night. Friday night the people, particularly teenagers, pray the whole night through. Pray all day Saturday. Pray all Saturday night into Sunday. And the glory of God fills the place. You see, you've got to get an appetite. You know the nitty-gritty of the whole thing is this. We don't know God. We don't know God. We know theology. We know about Him. Why did Jesus come into the world? To save sinners. That's not what Jesus said. What did Jesus say? I'm come that they may know thee. Every man that comes in my office, and I get them worldwide, I don't know why, but they come. And I say, first tell me, do you know God? Well, I have a degree. I didn't ask you about that. Do you know God? When was your last encounter with God? When were you last prostrate in His presence? When did you last sit spellbound at His majesty? You don't know God. Because we don't know God, we don't know how to worship. We don't know how to enter into His presence. We're content to know a few theological shibboleths that other people have taught us. Dear God, one of the leading men in the Southern Baptist Church, a very dear friend of yours, I won't give you a clue after that, my dear brother, he said to me recently, he said, listen, forget our seminaries. There's no anointing in them. Those professors are teaching the lessons on Romans they taught ten years ago. You can shake the dust off them. And every year they go back and say the same thing. Romans is chapter one and then chapters eight to eleven and chapters to... a parrot can say it. How can men sit and hear the word of the living God and not catch fire? Amen. That's right. Our God is a consuming fire. I don't know. What do I preach tonight? When do I preach tomorrow, two of the day after? I have two more times, so maybe I'll get to preach on the incandescent man, I like that, and then on the indestructible man. You see, the blessed word of God, it torpedoes us, it says Elias was a man of like passion. Have you noticed so often God says, I look for a man. Have you noticed in the middle of his great, the greatest poem ever written on love? 1 Corinthians 13 has 13 verses. He suddenly stops talking about love and he says when I became a man, what does he mean? Tell me manly, think it over. When did he become a man? What does he mean? When did he step out of spiritual infancy? When did his parents move out of spiritual immaturity? When did that vision come? I want to preach on him one day before I go, I hope. When you were talking last night about Hebrews 11, you know, I read that chapter as I tell you, when I read Hebrews 11, I follow my phrase because not one person in Hebrews 11 ever had a Bible and when I've read all about achievements, I'd like you to preach on this sometime manly. There's a verse there that staggers me and it says what? It says they did by faith subdued kingdoms wrought righteousness, obtained promises, stopped the mouths of lions and then one verse says, not accepting deliverance. What does it mean? I'd rather die than fail Christ. You can't imagine it, can you? There's a woman standing over there feeding a baby and the judge says to her, look, listen preacher, you take three grains of incense to that at the feet of Caesar and all you do is say, Caesar is Lord, you can go back to your darling wife and precious baby. If not, those lions are going to release them. The next thing you'll find a lion chewing your baby up. Another one tearing the breasts off your wife. Do you love your wife? You tell me you're going to love a God you can't see to the wife and he stands there and watches it. We've forgotten all about that. There's a book called Fair Sunshine. It's about the young men that were put to death in Scotland until 1665. And as you read them waving their hands and saying, have three more days before I see the king in his beauty. You see, what our generation of preachers have managed to do, we've failed to make sin diabolical, we've failed to make sin offensive, and we've failed to make sin attractive, Christ attractive. You know, the only time you can sing the hymn of Wesley, Thou, O Christ, art all I want. The only time you can say Christ is all I need is when Christ is all you have. We're propped up with everything. Our refrigerators are full. I don't have many clothes, but I have at least two suits at least. And I have at least two pair of shoes. I went to one preacher's place, he had thirty-five sportscoats and twenty-five pairs of shoes in nearly as many books. Does a devil care what we have? All he's worried about is that you catch fire, and then your church catches fire. Another thing, let me say this, I've gone round a bit, I know, but I've got to get wound up and say what I want to say. You see, the great revivals of Methodism were not in buildings, they were in the streets. The Salvation Army set England on fire. Wow. Not by buildings. The Bishop of Gloucester said, Don't ever let John Wesley or Charles Wesley in any of our churches. They were both certified men of impeccable morality, scholars, read Hebrew and Greek. Don't let them in the churches. And don't let that man, George Whitfield, in the church at all. Tell me who was the bishop at that time? Nobody knows. Don't care a hill of beans. But we know the men that got kicked out. You know, some of you guys, if you're faithful, you'll be kicked out. At least that's my prayer. I pray you'll all get fired for being fired. But God's going to do it. Don't lose sight of that with all I've rambled on. You see, God used the same material before. They were flesh and blood. Many of them were fallible. Paul was saying this morning, some of them made great mistakes, but God looks on the heart. And they were able to see great movings of the Spirit of God. America is harder today than she's ever been. We've no vocabulary anymore. Nobody commits adultery now. They just have an affair. There's no fornication. It's premarital sex. Nobody's messing with spiritism. It's just channeling. We've taken the sting out of all the words. We don't talk about hell. We've got to get back to biblical theology. And listen, we've got to do the essential thing. Jesus says, if I be lifted up, we're not preaching Christ. We're preaching drugs. We're preaching abortion. We're preaching crime. We're not preaching Christ. Our fathers, I've been reading very much lately again, well, partly the apostolic fathers, and the men up in the Puritans, and the other people in that area. How they exalted Christ. It was Christ first, Christ last. You see, we've lost sight of the majesty and holiness of God. We don't tiptoe out of the sanctuary, subdued by God's almightiness and power and mercy. It's just a ritual. It's a formality. People know where we're going to start. Now we're going to start. But let's go back to the main issue again. The main issue. The church should vibrate. Boy, if I lived within a hundred miles of this place, I'd be here every week at least once to pray with these guys. I wouldn't pray in the day when it's coming to them. I'd pray at nine o'clock till three in the morning. And see how men would come. They'll come. There's nothing more attractive on this earth than fire. Whether it's physical or spiritual, fire is the most attractive. Our God is a consuming fire. And the only answer to hell fire is holy ghost fire. Brother Leonard, let me ask you another question. You make interviews very easy. This is my third question now. What do you believe is the greatest hindrance to genuine revival in the church here in the West? The number one hindrance to revival in America is evangelism. We've made it easy for people to come forward and say a little prayer and go out. Stop them and ask. You ask teenagers in your church. Number one, are you saved? Yeah, from what? Oh, from hell. Are you saved from lust? Are you saved from pride? They don't know. Talk about the witness of the spirit that John Wesley preached on more than anything else. They don't know what you're talking about. They'll sing blessed assurance and they have no assurance. The hindrance, number one, is we've made it so easy for people to come forward. They go out at the door. I watched some recently. They had to get out of the door. They were lighting cigarettes. They weren't going home under anguish. Do you not, dear what's his name again? Spurgeon said when he was 15 he was under conviction of sin for weeks and weeks and weeks. He couldn't sleep. He couldn't eat. When do you get conviction like that? Dear God, our people, they're a bit upset in the meeting. They go out. They go back to sin. They go back and sit before TV till midnight. There's no concern. There has to come an awakening in the church to the peril. Those loved ones of yours at the end of the table, they don't go to church. No, they're going to hell. Why don't you say it? My boy's a good boy. He's quarterback. Who cares a hell of beans if he's quarterback or fullback or any other back. Where are your children? What's your ambition for your boy? I have three boys. Two of them, two of the best preachers in America today. The other one's the head of one, the new section in that multi-million dollar what do you call it now? Smithsonian Museum. And these boys, they've got prayer lives. Two of them have got tremendous prayer lives and they're my joy. I would be totally unhappy if they were anything else. They'd never be millionaires. They'd never be rich. But they know God. They're laying up treasure in heaven. And our young people, you see, it's not a case of getting the family, getting the Bible back in the schools. Get the Bible back in your home. We were talking, I was talking to your brother Bill here about what's his name now? Duncan Campbell. I spent many hours in prayer with Duncan Campbell. He used to pray and weep and groan. The amazing thing, Billy, I don't know, he never had revival except when he preached in Gaelic. I preached between the first day of, I remember the first day of World War I. It was the 4th of August. My cousin went to the army. He came back crippled. I remember the first day of World War II. I was to preach at the head church of Nazarene Saturday night. In the afternoon I went to a mission hall in the center of Glasgow and I didn't know. They said, this is Duncan Campbell. And he was always known as Duncan Campbell of the Argyle Revival. I'll tell you about that. To now he'd lost his anointing and became nobody. But I said to him, well what was the condition? He had what? Revival 1949? He said, well by the way at that time, after breakfast in the morning they lifted all the dishes off the kitchen sink, off the table, put them in the kitchen sink, and Daddy got the Bible and he read a psalm or a psalm usually, commented on it, and the children had to memorize the, what do you call it? The shorter catechism. You see maybe the greatest hymn writer we ever had was Isaac Watts. He wrote when I surveyed the wondrous cross. He wrote joy to the world, the Lord is come. He wrote marching to Zion. Wonderful man of God. But do you know he had a catechism for children under seven years of age? And you couldn't move up in a class in Sunday school until you'd memorized it. Then he had another catechism for children from seven to fourteen years of age. Then he had another catechism for people fourteen and up. What does a good book say? Thy word have I hid in my heart that I might not sin against thee. And so I said, well you give me the secret of revival. The seed had been in the hearts of those children for ten and fifteen years. Then the Holy Ghost comes and sends somebody along and that seed begins to germinate. The word of God is quick and powerful. Where is it? It's first in my heart. But then the Holy Ghost breathes on it. It's though I have a little spark in my heart. The Holy Ghost breathes on it and it comes into a flame. Your number one concern should be your family. I went to preach at a certain college at a good time. The second time I went, a guy came and he said I want to thank you for coming. He said God moved on my heart last time you were here. Fine. And he said I believe in you. I said what do you mean you believe in me? He said because you've raised three boys that are credit to you. Two wonderful preachers. My precious wife did most of it. I was away touring in prayer. But I spent hours in prayer for them. And my number one even if I was in a big church in some other country. Number one today Lord. The first thing I cover my family with the precious blood. I believe the Holy Spirit will talk to them. Dear God when Paul was sixteen years of age he prayed more hours than I prayed. We would pray till one and two in the morning. In an old part of a mansion we had in Ireland. And all the men I've known have been men of prayer. And it costs something. But you see your ambition should be to see your spiritual offspring in your home. Your spiritual offspring in the church. If I were in a church I would have a nucleus of about ten young men every week and talk to them about the things of God particularly in the life of prayer. I'd read some of the great characters that God has made because they're made of the same stuff as us. I wouldn't be bothered about a big church. Why didn't Jesus take the five thousand? He fed them. They didn't follow him. He didn't feed the five thousand in a church. He didn't feed the four thousand in a church. He manifested his power. He had twelve and they weren't all good. Thomas doubted. Look at the mess that Judas made. But prayer is the secret. You know that. You make up your mind you're going to give time to a prayer. The devil will fight it more than anything else. Your phone will ring off the hook. Visitors will come. Somebody will say come and preach at our church. Why do you go conduct a revival in somebody else's church when your own is dead? That's nonsense. Brother Avonhill if you had if you knew that God was going to remove you from the scene and you only had one message left that you could communicate to the church in North America. What would that message be? What's the burden of your heart right now? There will be two things. Number one the sad thing we don't know God. Jesus I am come that they may know thee the only true God and Jesus Christ whom thou send. And if we know God we don't have to know anybody else. If we don't know God we need to know everybody else. The other thing that's obscure I'm going to use it when I preach on the indestructible man. We've lost totally lost sight of the judgment seat of Christ. Totally. Suppose the Lord is coming today. As you as a pastor would you welcome him and say Lord my church is the cleanest church in town. We're without spot or wrinkle. We've dealt with divorce. We've dealt with drunkenness. I have the most godly bunch of deacons in Texas or in America. I have the finest group of young people. Lord I've spent my life preparing the bride. Why doesn't he come? Because the bride hasn't made herself ready. She's filthy. She's unclean. It isn't rape and all the damnable things in the world that keeps Jesus away. The church is filthy. He's not coming for a bride. Therefore we have to revive the revival of true holiness. Bill I believe with all my heart. You do I believe too. Manly. Holiness has to come. There are three things missing in modern preaching. Immensity, intensity and eternity. There are two things missing in the pew. One is integrity and the other is honesty. But you read about those old puritans they had immensity and intensity. There was no dodging the word of God. You felt you were almost being crucified with it. It's the word of God that's living as my dear brother said last night. It's not an illustration. You build a doctrine on it. You can't do that. These guys that have all these visions they trouble me in one sense. You have a vision. It doesn't help me. It's my personal relationship with God. And as you taught last night I was thinking how often I've preached on that chapter of Manly. And it's a wonderful chapter on faith. And the key in that chapter to me is Hebrews 11 6. How does it begin? And he that cometh to who? He that cometh to God must believe that he is that he is what? That he is able to save to the uttermost. That he's able to keep you from falling. He's able to make you pure in an impure world as I said the other night. The greatest miracle in the world is God can take an unholy man out of an unholy world, make him holy put him back in that unholy world and he can walk in truth and righteousness from here to eternity, walk through hell. Jesus didn't die to save us from sins. He died to us too. What did he die for? To get a peculiar people unto himself. You know many of people in your church want to be good but not many want to be holy. Who wants a drunken husband? Who wants a rotten unfaithful wife? Who wants kids that are the smartest dressed in town? Who cares? Ask your children, do you want to be holy? You think he might turn around and say, Dad are you holy? Do you live like Christ in our home? You see that's where it comes down to role models as we say. We've got men who are models I think you centralised it last night when you were talking about Christ being in us. You see a man isn't saved because he gives up his lousy sins and confesses his sins and believes Jesus rose from the dead. The devil believes that. The devil believes in the virgin birth, he witnessed it. The devil believes in the resurrection, he witnessed it. But there's no Christ in the devil. It's Christ in you. Paul says he revealed himself to me and then he revealed himself in me. You'll never forget that if you have that crisis I'll tell you that. You can argue as much as you like about the second blessing. You come into a crisis where the Christ becomes different. The word of God lives and vibrates. The losses of men, you see men robbing God every day. Some of your deacons do it. They rob God of time, they rob God of his testimony, they rob God of his authority on them. There has to come a revival of purity in the church. So the two most urgent things to me will be to preach that you may know God. Say for the next month you say I'm going to do nothing but study about Jesus Christ who he is and what he is and I'm going to study about the judgment seat of Christ. I've preached on the judgment seat of Christ for more than twenty years. I've been working on the book for nine years but you know what, it terrifies me. I try to go to bed at nine. One night I was late, I went to ten. I woke up at two o'clock and went to the house, to my little office and I opened Revelation. I began to read Revelation 20 and it's as though the book suddenly left alive. What did I read? I read there the second death and suddenly I said I've heard a hundred sermons on the second coming. I've heard a hundred on the second blessing. I've heard a hundred on the second coming, on the second birth, on the second blessing and never heard one on the second death and just a voice like that I'm sure just said to me hell has no exit and I turned around. What do you think I did, go back to sleep? A million roads into hell and nowhere. Well preacher tell me when did you last, come on be honest, don't raise your hand, when did you last preach on hell? Huh? Not sure the Dallas guys don't believe it. Cut it out of your bible. You've cut it out of your preaching, what's the difference? In God's sight you cut it out of your bible. Boy you're going to get into trouble man, you won't be in the southern baptist. Did you say we should do what Jesus did? You see kids come to me and say well I'm going to the Philippines for three weeks, can you speak the language now and give that tract? Why? To fulfill the great commission. What was the great, well the last words of Jesus. Tell me what were they as manly says, what were they? Well the last word of Jesus was going into all the world and not in my bible. That's the last word to the disciples. The last word of Jesus is three times over in Revelation, repent, repent, repent. And he didn't say go into all the world and preach, he said make disciples. You can't make disciples in five minutes at the altar. You can't make disciples by giving tracts on main street every Friday night, bring them in. Even if you should bribe them with coffee or a donut or something and say we're going to have instruction now, we're not going to go through the catechism, the pastor's made a catechism, we're going to teach you the fundamentals of the faith. Our kids don't know it. I guarantee, there's a big church in the south where the pastor says we're called to the 11,000 college students in this town. And then he says, I'll give you the name of it in the back of my bible, and he says in this town in their sophomore years and the baptist, I'll give you his name, he says the sophomore students in the colleges here, as soon as they get away from home in the second semester of sophomore, they quit church, they go off out on Sundays. Why? Because they've been baptized and everything, but they've never met Christ. They've gone through a ritual and a formula. Few of our young people are generally born again of the spirit of God. Boy, I'm glad when I got saved, I got saved. I know sooner I got saved, boy I got an appetite for prayer. I owe a lot to America and he owes a lot to me too, but somebody gave me a limited edition of the life of David Brainerd. When I read it, I cried. I said people told me that all finished with the New Testament. Listen, if miracles finish with the New Testament, prayer finished! You show me why God the Holy Ghost abrogated giving gifts unto men? You can't show me. A professor told you. Who told him? Not God, the devil told him. It's an amazing thing. You can be in a church and commit adultery. You shouldn't do, but if you do that or some other thing, they'll let you stay as a pastor. You get filled with the Holy Ghost and speak in tongues, they'll kick you out. I had dinner the other day with Dr. Jack Reed. You know Jack Reed? Beautiful man of God. Knows Hebrew through and through. Knows Greek through and through. Was teaching in Dallas. No, sorry, Jack Deer. Thank you dear. Jack Deer. And I sat with him. Well, he was teaching Greek and Hebrew. I won't mention the seminaries. A whole lot of these seminaries. I mean seminaries in Dallas. And he didn't get the gift of He went to see what was happening in these other churches. When he saw it, he became alarmed. You know, a guy said to me, I've read your books. One thing sticks in my mouth. What is it? You said one day, somebody's going to read the Bible and believe it. And when they do we'll all be embarrassed. That's what they do in some of these foreign countries. They get the Bible and they read it. They stare and say, hey, who's this Jesus? Is he there? Oh no, he lives up there. They don't get a hill of beans if he lives up there if he's not living in you. Life action became new to me today. I'll tell you, you can believe dear brother. I know you do on your team. But people don't just get interested when your van goes down the street with a life action. How much life do you leave in churches? How much life is there? Does somebody say Dell and his team, they don't preach like ordinary men. They preach as though they've got something of a power that we've never measured. I'm going to keep saying, I'll stop, I will right now. But you know what, all of us are thermometers. We have a big thermometer at the back of our window and I say to Martha in the morning, darling what is it? Do you know the last few mornings before we came here it was almost 80 at 7 in the morning and what's it going to be today? 100. But do you know that poor thermometer? Well poor thermometers around, they were at 80 the other day, boy they went down like the stock market. Down to 40 or something last night. But there inside the door, you have a, what do you call it? A thermostat. Well it's only a thermometer. The difference is this, the thermometer outside gets opened down with the changing of the world. The thermostat taps into some power and it doesn't say I'm going to go up and down I'm going to control the atmosphere. The atmosphere doesn't control me, I control the atmosphere. Well listen, either the world, the flesh and the devil control you or God the Holy Ghost controls you. We don't go up and down we're God controlled, we're God inspired, we're God energized. We're not serving a denomination we're serving the living God and brethren listen, every one of us here this morning, we're on probation we're coming for our finals I'll tell you a thought on the judgment see when I preach on Paul that absolutely floored me when a brother wrote it to me recently. But you see you start preaching, every time you make this sermon, put your notes down or whatever you have and say Lord, I'm just going to preach this in the light of the judgment and I answer for every word before a billion or fifty billion people I have to answer for this message. Keep a record of your prayer life and at the end of the week say Lord, this is it. If you can't control your TV, every time you go to the TV, put a chair at the side and invite the Lord to sit there and you make a note of how many minutes you spend, how many hours and at the end of the week, keep a list on your praying and see how much time. I know the football season coming and all the other crazy things you know what? In my mind, entertainment is the devil's substitute for joy. The more joy you have in the Lord, the less entertainment you need. When you can say, Thou O Christ, art all I want but listen, be careful he may strip you of everything else you have you may lose some of your best friends that think you're fanatical they don't mind you being kind and good but you become holy and zealous and immediately have you got friends that think you're crazy? Good, well I've got some too maybe they're the same friends. If you were to recommend to these young revivalists and pastors two books that they were to read within the next year that would make the greatest contribution to their ministry what would they be? Well I guess some of you could guess number one would be The Christian Incomplete Armor by Gurnall G-U-R-N-A-L-L it's 1130 pages Wilkerson told me it turned his life round there's another book called what's it? Looking Unto Jesus, that's a secret the whole Christian life is in three words in Hebrews 12, 2 Looking Unto Jesus, it's written by Isaac Ambrose in the same bracket, 16 have you got that too? Good, and then the other I would a paperback which is published by Banner of Truth called Fair Sunshine talking about these young martyr preachers, I had a fellow in my office the other day, he's just upgraded the ten volumes of Philly you'll find them, Philly Parkers Bethany's done them, he's taken every book that Philly had and he's he hasn't done any drastic surgery on them, he's just made it easier but there are ten volumes, there are two more still to come and they're very very precious and then the other I would, a paperback it's called A Soul of Prayer it's by P.T. Forsyth there's one phrase in that book which is worth the book and he says, you say you have to pray to maintain your Christian life he says, you have to maintain your Christian life to pray and that makes all the difference Revival is based on Psalm 24 who shall ascend into the hill of the Lord either thy clean hands, our relationship with the world, and of pure heart, our relationship with God, and it's as simple as that and then it's humiliation and brokenness and tears and fasting and be willing to be considered even by spiritual people do you think that Hannah didn't feel it when the priest the so called elect of God says this woman's drunk she never said a word Brother Avonhill, I know you've got to go and prepare for tonight and on behalf of all of our participants here I want to thank you for giving so much of yourself and what God has taught you this afternoon well it's been lovely to meet you brothers there's nothing on God's earth secondary to preaching the job in the White House is peanuts, compared to being a man of God in God's house God's house is going to change America not the White House it's full of corruption, it's like Washington it's like Wall Street it's down the drain, and the church is in the same condition, there's going to be revival, I'm looking tonight for some men, maybe there's one man in that meeting tonight, I keep saying to myself and I've got a word from God, I know that maybe there's one man who's going to be transformed tonight and only ten years from now we'll know what God did, I've seen that happen more than once and that's my desire I love you all, I love you dear brother pray for every day